


Circling

by Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: Mad Max Snippets [9]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Baby Fic, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Multi, Polyamory, Sort of? - Freeform, references to miscarriages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5544197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Val, Furiosa and Max, becoming a family</p><p>A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5238674">Assembly</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Circling

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Mad Max Secret Santa exchange
> 
> It's a sequel to [Assembly](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5238674)
> 
> Please note there is some non-graphic reference to miscarriages both current and in Furiosa's past.

 

Val made her way up to the lookout post, just like she'd done every day in the two years since her recovery when she'd first made it to the Citadel. They had managed to make the place into something new, a place of refuge and hope. A new green place, of sorts. That didn't stop her from feeling cooped up, sometimes, uncomfortable with the way the walls closed in and the many voices echoed. 

It had been three months since Max had come back and agreed to a child. Three months of growing closer than ever, enjoying each other's bodies, sharing their hopes and dreams for the Citadel, for the child they were hoping for. 

Val looked into the distance, breathed the air of the plants all around her, and swallowed her disappointment. Her monthly had come that morning, and been heavier than normal. She'd hoped - she'd thought she'd felt - well, she hadn't been wrong. Apparently the time hadn't been right for it though. 

It hadn't been right ten years ago, when she'd sought out a trader man in the hope of giving her dwindling people a new life to rally around. The desert life hadn't been able to sustain the life inside of her. She'd just assumed that with living in the Citadel, the better food and more plentiful water would… 

Well. She'd been hopeful, anyway. What if after all this time, after they'd built this green place and after she'd found a man she wanted as father of her child, she couldn't have one?

Good thing she hadn't told Furiosa about it yet. Furiosa's memories of early pregnancy and the associated failures - more common than not, in the Wastes - were stressful and complicated. Val had hoped to spare her the anxiety. 

How Max would be, when told, she didn't know. He'd been gone for the past week or so, though she expected him to not be away long. 

She stayed up there for a while longer before the cramps drove her back to their quarters. 

 

Furiosa found her curled up on their bed. 

"Hey…" she sounded so sweet and careful, that tone that always made Val think about how good a mother Furi would make, and it was hard to hold back tears. 

Furiosa saw the flat, heated rock wrapped in cloth that Val held against her stomach, and nothing more needed to be said. She took off her prosthetic and settled down against Val, wrapping her arms around her and pulling her in. Kissed her forehead, then hummed softly against Val's hair. 

When Furiosa finally spoke, Val had expected to hear 'Maybe next time' or 'we can try again'. Instead Furiosa only said "I am so glad you're here."

Val thought maybe the tears were for both of them, because Furiosa couldn't cry. Maybe they were for everything that was and could have been, and maybe also a little for what might yet be. 

 

Max returned with olive tree cuttings and a piece of the softest fabric Val had ever felt. He handed it to her while Furiosa exclaimed over the cuttings, and his face flushed at her surprised sound as she felt it. 

"It's, uh. For the—" he gestured vaguely in the direction of her flat stomach. Make motions she thought might indicate wrapping an infant. A swell of heat ran through her, and she felt her face grow warm. She had known he wasn't a trader, happy to spread his seed and never know what came of it. She'd  _ known  _ that. 

She just hadn't known she could find him  _ this  _ attractive, this Wasteland man with his awkward words and his careful hands. Could feel a sudden, visceral longing to seeing him with their baby in his arms. At her side she sensed Furiosa giving him a somewhat similar look, and then Furiosa nudged Val with her nub while grabbing Max's hand, guiding them both along to the bathing room. 

"You need to be clean," she said decisively, and Val and Max exchanged a look of helpless endearment as they were towed along. Good thing there was a bathing room on the Imperator's hallways that nobody else used. 

 

Two moon cycles later her monthly didn't come. Val and Furiosa didn't speak of it, very carefully didn't refer to it. Not even when Furiosa brought Val a cool damp cloth for the back of her neck while Val was kneeling by the sand bucket. It was like one of the tiny, fragile birds that had started to appear around the Citadel, the ones you didn't look at, didn't gesture at, only left some grain out for and tried to give safe spaces to nest. 

Toast had told Val about what it had been like in the Vault, hoping for a pregnancy because it kept you safe while not wishing their existence on anybody, least of all a child. The simultaneous fear and relief of miscarrying. Val didn't push it. 

 

In the fourth month, at night Furiosa's hand would sometimes slide over Val's stomach, rested a while there. As if only now daring to believe this might be happening. 

Max brought home a small toy that made a tinkling noise when shaken. His travels were shorter now, a week, perhaps two. 

When she began to show he'd sometimes kneel in front of her and kissed the growing bump. (Then, with a glance for permission, kissed lower)

He brought home half a small drum that could serve as crib, and a construction of moving parts and colourful scraps of plastic to hang above the crib. 

Val might have worried that Max's easy way of handling her pregnancy, the way he always seemed to know what to do or to say, how to touch, would make Furiosa feel bad. But Furiosa seemed relieved every time Max returned. Seemed to lose some of her tension when the three of them were together, as if he were making up for some perceived failure on her side. 

Max saw it too, often drew Furiosa into his moments of putting his ear to Val's belly. Anchored her there, heavy arm around her shoulders until she relaxed into it. Val petted Furiosa's hair, and thought about a motorcycle assembled from parts of several old wrecks. None of them were exactly whole, but maybe the three of them - the  _ four  _ of them - might just figure it out between them. 

 

The baby was born on a stormy morning, the first grey light of dawn just creeping through the shuttered window.

"Open it the window," Val said to Max, who was standing by with twitching hands as Gale and Janey examined the infant as it cried tentatively. "Don't care about the draft." She needed to see the sky. Their child needed to see the sky. They all did.  

Val was exhausted, leaning back against Furiosa behind her, solid and warm and comforting. She had stayed with Val there throughout all the long hours of labour, washed her forehead, helped her walk through the hallways when Val's body had demanded motion. 

"A girl, all whole," Janey said, with a smile full of shocked joy. She bent down to hand over the baby, and Furiosa briefly opened the blankets wrapped around Val's body so the infant could be nestled down against her bared breast. Val watched as Furiosa wrapped them back up and then let her hand cup lightly around the baby's head. Val heard an intake of breath, a soft, wondering "...Oh…" as the cries quietened, and knew Furiosa hadn't truly believed there would be a healthy baby at the end of all this, and no sorrow. 

"Max.. Max," Furiosa said with breathless wonder. "Look at her."

Janey nudged Max, who seemed to have frozen, and he went to his knees beside them. Just stared at the little head, mostly tucked back into the blankets. He looked  _ terrified _ , and Val thought distantly that she should have seen that coming, that apparently his memories of pregnancy were positive but that bad stuff must have happened later. 

Furiosa drew him in with her nub, tucked him in against their sides, and he was tense, trembling. Val curled her arm around him, and the solid contact seemed to help a little. The three of them looked at their daughter.  

"Diana," Val decided. "She's Diana."

 

Val had never much liked the cave-like spaces in the Citadel, and having a child in there somehow made it feel worse. So they moved to a large tent on top of the West tower, as close an approximation of a Vuvalini family tent as they could make it.  They didn't ignore the realities of the Citadel, the warboys still adapting to the new way of living, the refugees down below now in better state but by no means comfortable. But being able to retreat to the tent, being able to sit outside in the evening, by a small fire, that was a blessing.

Janey had asked the blackthumbs to weld together a large steel frame, and hung a swing from it, something both Val and Furiosa had only vague memories of. Furiosa liked to sit there with Diana in her sling, swinging gently whenever the baby was restless. 

Val wasn't at all surprised that Furiosa took to motherhood. It was as if the moment she'd seen Diana, all the lingering fear blew out with the morning air. Val knew Furiosa had been afraid the life she'd had to live and the person she'd had to be had burned the ability to be one of the Many Mothers right out of her. But Furiosa cradled the baby to her chest, changed soiled cloth, sang to her, and generally doted on her with an intensity that made Val feel a little tearful sometimes. They quickly figured a way for Furiosa to carry the baby in a sling, and Val easily caught up on the sleep she'd had to miss toward the end of the pregnancy. 

Max, on the other hand, had barely managed to stay a day after the birth. Val might have laughed at the utter reversal of roles if she hadn't been so annoyed. 

"He'll come back," Furiosa said, "yes he will, won't he?" she added to Diana, who crowed. 

"You were afraid, and you didn't run."

"Wanted to, sometimes," Furiosa said quietly. She came to stand next to Val by the tent entrance, looking out together. 

 

When Diana was fifteen days old, there came reports of a car circling the outer edge of the Citadel territory.

"I'm gonna drag him here by his scraggly little beard," Val said when a warboy brought them the news. 

"Give him a few days?" Furiosa suggested. "It's… he's probably trying."

"Fine. Two days. This is ridiculous."

Two days later he was still circling, or perhaps patrolling. Either way Val was well past any patience she might have scraped up. 

"I'm gonna go get him."

Furiosa smiled, gently took Diana from her arms. 

"Let me send some warboys with you. In a separate car."

Val thought about protesting, because she generally tried to avoid close associations with the warboys. Most of them regarded her with a kind of distant intensity that she'd never managed to grow comfortable with. She was still bleeding though, not back to her old form or even close to it. And Max was currently on the side of the Buzzard territory. Going alone would be foolish. 

 

Most of the anger bled out of Val when she caught sight of him. He'd stopped on her approach, gotten out of his car like it was the hardest thing he'd ever done, standing there in the face of her anger. He looked grey and drawn, a twitchiness to him that she hadn't seen since that first time they'd met in the Wastes. 

She gestured for the Ace to keep his distance, and parked up close to Max's car. 

"Hey."

"Hey," he hummed, eyes tracing over her body as if inspecting her for any harm. "You, ah, you shouldn't be out here."

"Neither should you," she shrugged, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, leaning back against his car. "Any longer and they're gonna set the clock by your circling."

He huffed the ghost of a laugh.

"Trying ta... " he gestured vaguely, trailing off. 

"Mm."

He sighed. 

"Brought nothing but harm to my—. To. Before."

She hummed in sad acknowledgement. The echoes of it had been writ large in his body, his face, his motions, on the day of Diana's birth. 

"Worried I'm gonna— you should go back."

"I'll go when you come with me."

He made a little noise of distress.

"Why?" he said finally, "not like you need me there, I— just—"

Val thought for a moment, because hadn't that been her thought originally? That with herself and Furiosa there, Max's presence would be more optional? The Vuvalini hadn't put much stock in fathers since Val herself had been a child and the green place a very different place than its latter days. 

Except right now it didn't feel that way. It felt like he needed to be there with them in the tent, curling up together on the bed, marvelling over Diana's tiny grabby hands. She felt his absence like an ache, and knowing he'd been out here, so close but choosing not to be with them, had been frustrating. 

"I need you to be there too," she finally said, shrugging helplessly. Glanced at him, trying to figure out how he was taking this. He was staring at her, frozen. She reached out and slipped her hand into his.

His shoulders sagged suddenly with something that was maybe defeat, maybe relief. 

"I'll come," he murmured. 

"Good."

Val had no doubt that Furiosa was at the lookout post, following their every move. Val took Max's hand as soon as they'd both parked in the vehicle cave, and he followed her with something she thought was a lot like trepidation, like she was leading him into danger. 

She took her time on the steps up, taking breaks to catch her breath, and at some point Max went from being all but towed along to supporting her, letting her lean on him as needed. When they made it up to the green he seemed to relax a little, as if the space around him, the scent of the plants, allowed him to breathe a little easier. 

Furiosa was on the swing, looking out over the wasteland, Diana nestled securely against her chest. 

Max trailed to a halt at seeing them. Val waited. 

"You don't have to do it alone, you know," she told him after a long moment. "Keeping her safe."

He hummed in acknowledgement, if not agreement. 

"There's Furiosa, and me, and Janey, and Gale, and Toast, Dag, Capable, Cheedo.." she summed up. "The milking mothers… and Ace, and the rest of the warboys - you know I'm not too comfortable with them, but whatever or whoever is important to Furiosa, they'll protect with their lives."

"Hmm." 

They were both still watching Furiosa swing gently back and forth, and there was such peace to her body as she was sitting there, body formed protectively around their baby. That Furiosa had become one of the Many Mothers, so unforeseen after all that had happened, still sometimes made Val feel tearful. She suddenly needed to be over there with them, and let go of Max's hand, moving forward without consciously making the decision. 

Furiosa's face lit up as she spotted Val, trailing her bare feet in the grass to bring herself to a gentle stop. 

"Look, your mama is back," she said to Diana, safely tucked away against her chest. 

Val thought there could be nothing better than hugging Furiosa, their baby cradled between there. Then she felt the other woman shift her attention, and realised Max had followed her to them. 

"I. Um— I'm..."

Furiosa and Val shifted a little and opened up their circle, making space for him. For once he didn't hesitate, but stepped into the little circle of them, arms going around each of their waists as theirs locked around him. 

"And your papa, too," Furiosa whispered against Diana's crown. 

"Yes. I'm—" he kissed Furiosa, lightly, gently. Then turned to kiss Val's lips. "I am. That," he managed finally. Bent in to kiss Diana's downy head. "Here."


End file.
